Hobbit emails show Jackson’s dodgy dealings

The government has released the Hobbit documents. The Ombudsman ordered them to. The full release is available at stuff and what stands out (apart from the insistent and narcissistic tone of every film industry correspondent) is the fact that Peter Jackson himself noted the “do not sign” advice from the union was being called off. TWO DAYS before he went public with his “evil union destroying the Hobbit” story.

Here’s the email:

As you can see Jackson himself acknowledged that the dispute was effectively over. So why blow it up two days later?

Well, from what I can tell from these emails and ones released earlier, Jackson simply didn’t want to negotiate with a union and wanted the law changed to make sure he didn’t have to. And what Peter wants, it seems Peter gets.

To be fair to the government it seems that they resisted changing the law until Jackson blew it up into a fake crisis and John Key stepped in (no wonder, as I commented at the time, Gerry Brownlee sounded sick on the radio the morning Jackson pulled the pin).

Of course there’s also the matter of tens of millions of dollars of subsidies – no doubt the “crisis” offered Warners exactly the leverage they needed to extract that final pound of flesh from the taxpayer.

What really pisses me off about this is that Jackson made the lives of hundreds of his workers hell, and got many of them to turn on their unionised colleagues, by making them think their jobs would be gone when all the time he knew there was no danger of the film leaving NZ at all. What a nasty little creep.

It’s not irrelevant in the context of the statement made in the article “…tens of millions of dollars of subsidies “. I’d agree that you could argue that giving additional rebates may not have been necessary but it isn’t a subsidy.

But the article is dealing with the Hobbit film, right? Not just any rebate. The Hobbit rebates in particular.

In the case of the Hobbit rebates, the revenue would have been there, regardless – according to Jackson, anyway.
cf your : It’s not forgone revenue if the revenue wouldn’t be there if you didn’t offer the rebate.

So the rebates were foregone revenue. And your just nattering on about a semantic irrelevancy.

There would be no revenue to NZ if the film didn’t happen in NZ. The rebates were the price to pay to have the films made here. A smaller slice of something, rather than nothing. There was a net gain to NZ taxpayers (not to mention film workers) by having the films shoot here.

If you read the emails no one wanted to shoot the films elsewhere, and the threshhold for doing so was quite high, but it was on the table. I work in the film industry, I know how keen the studios are to go to the cheapest location, if they can make it work. Why are there so many films being shot in Romania, Albania and so on? US states do it too. Louisiana, Michigan are leaders. Warners had the vacant Harry Potter stage they were keen to use. But PJ was very keen to shoot here, and they made it work, despite the union.
BTW I am an independent contractor, and have always been an independent contractor. The legislation change merely confirmed the status quo, rather than the aberration that was the Bryson decision.

Fuck you’re full of shit John. Everyone knows that major studios completely capitulate to A-list actors/actresses and directors. Fat arse Jackson loves to sleep in his Wellington bed so it was never ever going anywhere else.

Everyone on this site is so committed to the ‘evil Peter Jackson’ point of view that there’s no point in actual debate. I’m personally against subsidies, but to be pragmatic having a film industry here requires them, so the question is do we want to be part of the international film industry? Or do we want a subsistence / cottage industry film industry? And the reality is these ‘subsidies’ or in fact rebates, didn’t cost the country anything, they meant a smaller tax take than otherwise, but a net gain to the taxpayer. The rhetoric / hatred on this blog is out of line.

I’m personally against subsidies, but to be pragmatic having a film industry here requires them,

So you’re in favour of subsidies then, as a “pragmatic” policy choice?
So am I.

The thing is, the tax rebate for the Hobbit wasn’t a subsidy to preserve an industry or essential economic skills. It was a nice little gift from Key to Jackson and his mates. The film was going to be made in NZ anyway. But throwing a little union red herring around justified to the public giving away thousands of hip operations or subsidised medicines, in exchange for a plastic sword and a dvd extra nobody will watch.

“It was a nice little gift from Key to Jackson and his mates. The film was going to be made in NZ anyway. ” Yeah right-o, the only people saying that the film was going to be made in NZ anyway happen to be the people who had no decision on where the film was going to be made. Nobody has come up with any evidence that Warners would have proceeded. In the three years since the dispute not a single disgruntled former employee of Jackson’s or Warner’s or anyone working in any of the ministers offices or government departments who were working on the deal have leaked a single document supporting your theory that it was a stitch up.

All we have is everybody involved in the decision making it very clear that they were pulling out unless they could get certainty. Only in your fantasy land would you seriously think Key wanted to give away government cash if he didn’t have to. I think you might be mistaking him for Michael Cullen’s genius train set deal.

Only in your fantasy land would you seriously think Key wanted to give away government cash if he didn’t have to

You have actually watched what this government does, right? Everything from limos to finance company bailouts to casino convention centres. The only people that Key resists giving bucketloads of money to are doctors, teachers and the poor.

1) The email indicates that there was no danger of the production leaving NZ.
2) Choosing to reduce taxes to attract a production is pretty much the definition of a subsidy. If you don’t believe in those, well, you can’t defend this, and if you do, well, then it should be alright for any business that we wouldn’t get otherwise, and all of a sudden you don’t really believe in free trade anymore.

There’s really no way to defend this deal from a right-wing perspective.

If the people working on the film had worked on other movies, or on TV, or as baristas, or (in the case of the many IT techs) fixing payroll software and the like, they’d have paid tax and so would their employers.

Saying that this film was a net addition to the NZ economy is artificial.

The most interesting new piece of information to come from that is the view of Peter Jackson that Simon Whipp was attempting to claim credit for negotiating The Hobbit contract so that he could claim the large revenue stream from the actors residuals. Certainly puts the whole thing into perspective if true.

you’ve never agreed that was the situation before though Gosman… in any previous comments on this topic. It appears to have confirm it as fact for you now. So for you, it might not be “new” but it is information you now accept. That is new.

I’ve read the docs a few times and can’t see the emails or memos from actors equity or helen kelly, or evidence of calls and meetings between govt officials and the other side of this story. Nope, they seem to have blindly accepted there was only ONE side to the story. How awfully naive of them.

I recall reading, but have no link or proof, that about $200m had already been spent on the hobbitt when this all happened which apparently made it unlikely the Hobbitt would be moved?

besides the point anyway, as that”s not the way residuals work. Any organisation to administer NZ actors residuals would be NZ run and affiliated to the NZ Actors Equity, much in the same way that NZ performers dues go towards running the NZ office.

And anyway, why the hell do producers get a say in how actors administer their residuals!?! Once the deal and percentages are worked out, and the producers have agreed to pay once profits are reached then it should be up to the actors to decide who and how those payments are administered. Once the producers pay it out its none of their business.

I’m not arguing he should decide how any residuals are spent. I’m merely relaying the information that he obviously thought control of these was the real reason Simon Whipp brought The Hobbit into this dispute.

What would be interesting is if any left wing party will be reversing the changes in legislation made as a result of this dispute.

FFS. Do you just change words every time someone disagrees with you and shift your semantic goalposts? It’s nothing to do with how they’re spent. You do get the difference between ‘spent’ and ‘administer’ don’t you?

And what do you mean by “control of these” if not ‘administration’? Cause, um, there aint no other way to control a residual, unless your a producer, like, oh I dunno, Jackson….

do you know what would really be interesting? – if you ever engaged in good faith, honest debate on the internet

He never will. In the past, he has literally admitted (in another forum) that he was just here to disrupt and annoy others, rather than engage. The hobbit movies seem to be his favourite topic though, and it seems like this post is well on its way to becoming another one with several hundred comments, with half of them being rubbish from gosman. I would suggest DNFTT.

Yeah he’s obviously an owned man out for his own, and that of his masters, good. I wonder if he will get blacklisted by the Actors union as a result. What is Helen Kelly’s take on all of this do you think?

Because I would like someone on the left to actually swing into action on this issue rather than just pontificate about how ‘evil’ Peter Jackson is and how it is sad he decided to screw the workers now he is a ‘rich prick’.

What would be good is if someone started calling for a boycott of Peter Jackson films. That would be great to see. Do you think it will happen?

Gosman. A union was attempting to organise part of the film industry. The final result was a change of law at the behest of a foreign film company that effectively removed the ability of those workers to unionise.

I imagine if the law is changed then unions will have another look at organising the industry.

You of course can add your support by writing to Key and Jackson lobbying for them to change the law to what it was.

I’m an independent contractor just like many of the people involved in making The Hobbit. There is nothing stopping me joining a Union that I am aware of. What part of the law stops the film workers doing so?

I think the audience will boycott the remaining 6 hours of the Hobbit going for a walk, especially after having been bored shitless by the first 3. I’m wondering if Jackson is just bored and seeing how much of a piss-take he can get away with.

Well stated Muzza, there is the little matter of tax subsidies for NZs fledgling film industry all those years ago without which Jackson and Taylor etc might have never flourished. Very nice of them to thank the NZ taxpayers in the way they did,especially that large bunch of union members who were the majority of workers all that time ago.

What dos that tell us? Perhaps that government intervention is good at creating work. And that you have to expect the winners you pick will include parasite ingrates.

He seems very passionate about the movies he makes. Other than that I don’t know anything about him. I don’t know his background in law reform or employment relations. I also now know he has a direct line to our Government for chats and the expression of his views. I think he probably just made another good chunk of coin from The Hobbitt but no awards. We have to be careful about turning people into saints when we don’t know them. He’s a film-maker, great, good for him, all power to him but that does not make his opinion on some matters worthy of completely ignoring the view of those he is upset with. In my experience very passionate people can be a little blinkered.

What really pisses me off about this is that Jackson made the lives of hundreds of his workers hell, and got many of them to turn on their unionised colleagues, by making them think their jobs would be gone when all the time he knew there was no danger of the film leaving NZ at all. What a nasty little creep.

See it sounds like you’re placing all the blame on Sir Peter Jackson when, IMHO, Simon Whipp played a much bigger part in this so thats why I mentioned him

Damn right I’m placing the blame on Jackson. Two days after privately admitting the don’t sign notice was lifted he went out and told his workers their jobs were in danger because the union had put a don’t sign notice on the hobbit.

So we see that the premier job creators in the NZ film industry felt themselves betrayed and played for fools by an Australian parasite who had only Self-interest in being involved. Yet Helen Kelly got involved (fuck knows why) and the entire union movement in NZ must go down like the titanic in solidarity. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face

And yet he’s allowed to retain a union membership. How is that for solidarity? So we have to hate big multinational movie makers who don’t care about our workers but not big unions with international pull and connections. Lol. Suck my balls solidarity.

You’ve managed to answer the question why do NZ unions persist in flogging this dead horse in the name of solidarity?

then perhaps you could do the right thing and leak some documents to support your assertions. Whistleblowing has its place. Asserting the existence of information to support an argument and not being able to produce it or refer to it in detail is a little…. facile?

Seems to me that there is no rebuttal (and never has been) to the simple claim that Jackson and Key lied to the people of New Zealand about the existence of a dispute which would apparently threaten the making of the Hobbit movie in NZ.

Lied
to
the
people
of
New Zealand

Jackson owes an explanation.

No more hikkery jiggery behind the scenes shenanagins or spoking through speakspeople. A simple stand up in front of the crowd explanation.

It seems he owes this given the amount of money that taxpayers have stumped up (or foregone, whatever, same thing ffs) and given that the laws were changed to suit him. And given this evidence of deceit and outright lies.

“If it’s highway robbery, we lock those guys up. But if companies put a gun to your head and take your money, it’s knighthoods and bonuses for the CEO.” Geoff Bertram.

In my opinion it’s NZ’s biggest problem, rent seekers. Nearly every industry in the country. Film, electricity, coal, building industry…etc and people have nothing, ie legislation, to protect them from it.

It’s not true that Jackson told film workers that the production risked going offshore knowing that MEAA had lifted the blacklist. That is just Helen Kelly and Simon Whipp spin. Jackson’s argument all along was that the MEAA’s actions and negotiation strategy, by imposing a blacklist before entering into negotiations made NZ’s employment environment unstable.

On 21 October Jackson said: “The lifting of the blacklist on The Hobbit does nothing to help the films stay in New Zealand. The damage inflicted on our film industry by NZ Equity/MEAA is long since done.”

given she didnt have a direct line of telephone/email/meeting communication with the govt as others did, she did pretty well. You dont think Jackson calling Whipp evil is a little shrill??? He was also preaching tot he choir, this govt needs no convincing that unions are “evil”, it’s long proceeded on that basis.

I watched it. It didn’t look good for Jackson or Brownlee. But strangely no one involved wanted to appear on the show to comment, not even Helen Kelly. It’s probably time to let this go. We found out the Nats did an unnecessary dodgy deal with Hollywood moguls that’ll boost their profits and and tried to hide as much as they could about how it all happened. Nothing surprising here really.

Sounds like the national lot at question time when whatshisname is doing one of his blarney rants that the speaker loves so much.They all laugh in sync,tut tut in sync,roll eyes in sync,shake heads in sync,clap in sync nod knowledgably in sync, show shock horror in sync. Fully trained up syncophiles,trained up at Sync school.louise upston is the most entertaining to watch.Startled possum in headlights. She is very good at nodding in particular.

In one email, Sir Peter refers to Mr Whipp as “a snake” and says: “He is in revenge mode, intent on inflicting as much damage as he can to our film, to our film industry, to our country.”

Whipp was a union manager, aiming to get as good a deal as possible for actors in the NZ actors’ equity, an independent branch of the Aussie union. A person in such a role would not be out to destroy the industry that provides work for the union members he represents.

I looked into that issue when the dispute was going on. One Hollywood film that was rejected an Aussie rebate because it was not an Aussie story, did not screw the Aussie film industry. It remains in a healthy state.

OK fair enough. My point is that at the time there was stress and hyperbole on both sides. If you were PJ and you saw your life’s work going offshore and had a legitimate grievance about the tactics of Simon Whipp, and you genuinely did believe that his actions were destroying the NZ film industry, then you might use strong language about him too.

Nothing I read suggests Jackson amped up the dispute. Here was a guy who spent years in planning and working on a series of movies and saw Whipp clumsily using the Hobbit to set conditions across the whole NZ film industry. As I said below I don’t think even Helen Kelly tried to defend Whipp’s actions. What Kelly did do was make a lot of claims about what the union’s intentions were which Russell Brown tore to pieces.

I think Helen was quite restrained considering how out of line Jackson’s behaviour was. She was threatened on the street by people who had been whipped up by his lies. I’d used much stronger language than brat if I were her.

Oh you’re pulling my leg Irishbill, “threatened on the street”? She got a taste of some of the behaviour that she organises against others on a weekly basis. Saying that a protest is in a “lynch mob mood” is pretty stupid for a professional protest organiser.

Jackson said the production was at risk. He initially said the production was at risk because of the behaviour of the MEAA, and then the boycott, and after the boycott was lifted he said the production was still at risk because he couldn’t trust the union to act in good faith and there was no certainty in the production. I can’t see any lies in any of those statements.

Well, open your eyes, fool. Taylor and Jackson lied when they said there was a threat, because a) there wasn’t one and b) the boycott had been lifted and they knew it. So, by lying they got shit loads of taxpayer money for their mates and removed the rights of all of their employees. It’s that simple.

So lying to people is good faith behaviour? And exactly was the threat? That employees would keep the right to be represented by a union? That Warners wouldn’t get to take home millions of kiwi taxpayers dollars for no reason at all?

I think it is notable that Kelly barely mentions Whipp when she told her side of the Hobbit dispute. Given the importance of Whipp’s role this seems to me like not an accident that she only mentions him twice in a several thousand word document and doesn’t once address the concerns about his behaviour. I would go so far as to say that Kelly attempts to whitewash Whipp’s role in the dispute because she patently ignores everything he did leading up to her involvement.

Thanks for the link. Kelly doesn’t mention Whipp much because he wasn’t that significant to the issue. Kelly explains all the things that were important, and shows why the focus on the MEAA (and thus Whipp) was part of the “Aussie card” that Team Jackson used. Kelly says:

Equity however still controls its own affairs in New Zealand. Its members meet regularly in branches. They run workshops, make submissions on NZ law, and on cultural and screen matters, organise new membership in new productions etc, have their own newsletters and website and comment on applications for immigration permits for foreign performers applying to work here. They have their own office and staff. Clearly they are also very much part of the MEAA infrastructure as well, but they get the benefits of both worlds.
Peter Jackson’s criticism of the union speaks for itself – a union seeking to widen membership and influence in the industry in which it operates – exactly! Incidentally, these days we have hundreds of Australian companies operating in New Zealand. Employers don’t criticise that, but apparently, don’t see the hypocrisy in opposing any Trans-Tasman union connection. …

Peter Jackson’s interventions in this dispute were few and well targeted. They appeared to occur when public opinion was changing or the dispute appeared to be more than one sided. He played the “Australian” card and made uninformed claims about Equity membership numbers (He claimed Equity had between 100 and 200 members –it has over 600). He trumpeted his own union membership of foreign unions (it is a requirement to work for example in the USA). He praised SPADA and the Pink Book (even though, as noted above, early contracts sighted for the Hobbit did not comply with the Pink Book). …

Continually focusing on Whipp is just a distraction & diversion by right wingers and Jackson Fanbois.

I thought it was rich that someone who oversees and condones the use of intimidation (its ok when its the unions doing it) suddenly turn around and complain when shes on the receiving end (something about whats good for the goose springs to mind)

Maybe something for her to think about in the future…

IrishBill: That’s a lifetime ban for threatening an author. You nasty little piece of shit.

There was all sorts of information flying about at the time. When Jackson made the statement, the CTU said that the ban had been lifted, but the SAG still hadn’t removed the ban listing from their website. It was never clear when the ban was lifted. The threat to the production, from Jackson’s standpoint, was not just MEAA and the CTU talking about the possibility of a ban (and MEAA didn’t even talk about it, they simply imposed it), but the SAG continuing to publish it. In that environment who was Sir Peter to trust? People who were telling untruths about their negotiating position, and expecting them to suddenly act in good faith, or his experience with him up until that point?

That notorious right winger Russell Brown came up with a very good analysis at the time. Brown tore apart most of Helen Kelly’s claims, including that the union had been acting in good faith during the negotiations. Paint Peter Jackson as an evil scheming “nasty little creep” if you want, but the way that Kelly bungled this fiasco ruined her reputation.

Sorry Bill we’re getting caught up in cross posting and talking across each other, so that we’re not repeating some things and missing others I’ll keep the chat in this thread line. I haven’t read your Russell Brown post but I’ll go read it now.

Having read it Bill, neither of those posts dissect Russell Brown’s interpretation at the time, but they lay out Helen Kelly’s position at the time. Your post then missed out some pretty important facts. Firstly that the MEAA imposed a boycott before negotiating with Jackson. Secondly that Actors Equity had refused to negotiate on the pink book for eighteen months before it suddenly became a priority. Thirdly that AE and MEAA demanded that Jackson include parts that could only have formed part of an industry-wide agreement such as nudity clauses which had nothing to do with the Hobbit. It was clear to Jackson that the union wanted the Hobbit to set the standards for the rest of the industry, not just minimum standards for the production.

The issue was, was the MEAA operating in good faith in its negotiations with the producers? Was Jackson justified in believing that Whipp had an alternative agenda, and that he was using the Hobbit to set industry-wide standards? By any measure I think Jackson was justified in that view. Whether Whipp’s agenda was to tank the NZ film industry to advantage Australia is probably unlikely, but I can understand after Jackson’s experience in dealing with Whipp and AE over two years, and being faced with a boycott, that he would be fed up and have lost any confidence in them suddenly getting their act together for the future.

And the union knew that it was unlawful to negotiate contractor agreements collectively.

I accept your point that Whipp wanted to organise a union.

But you are being disingenuous when you say a “do not sign notice” is not a boycott. Warners would have been blacklisted by the SAG globally if they had overriden it. SAG blacklisting is not what you do at the start of negotiations. It is what you do as an absolute last resort if there is no other way forward. Whipp put up the SAG blacklist before he had even met with Jackson or Warners. That isn’t good faith bargaining by any measure.

SPADA was happy to renegotiate the pink book over several years. EA resisted. Yes it isn’t a binding agreement, but had EA got the Pink Book revised then EA would have been entitled to insist that all productions that Equity members are involved in comply with the standards. But they didn’t.

Equity representatives at the beginning of the dispute, including Frances Walsh and Robyn Malcolm, publicly admitted that the agreement they were seeking from the Hobbit in the beginning was a national agreement which was not Hobbit-specific. Russell Brown covered this at the time. So plainly Jackson was being asked to negotiate a collective agreement that he wasn’t allowed to do, and create a precedent for the rest of the industry, which he wasn’t prepared to do.

Two key issues which Kelly failed to disclose when she rewrote history.

Shock horror AE wanted minimum standards and to improve the plight of their workers. What bastards …

And it is clear why Jackson was so determined to make sure that all workers were independent contractors, that way he could avoid any collective effort to organise because Finlayson told him it was illegal and against the Commerce Act.

And the union knew that it was unlawful to negotiate contractor agreements collectively.

Nope. Agreed minimum contracting standards. Or do you think Weta negotiates every single one of its contracts from a blank piece of paper?

A do not sign is exactly that. Or should people sign binding contracts and then try to negotiate them afterwards?

entitled to insist That’s hilarious. You’re basically saying they should spend a whole lot of time, money, and energy negotiating something that Jackson could then just say no to. Have I missed something? is “entitled to insist” in tort law somewhere? Is it a phrase with legal standing in contract law? Or is it code for ask nicely and the boss might let you have something?

And yes they would have been hoping to put the clauses into other documents but you need to read my response to Russel again. Specifically the bit about pattern bargaining. The desire to pattern bargain isn’t exactly evidence of a dark conspiracy.

I haven’t seen your post in response to Russell Brown, Bill. Could you please post the link.

Jackson saw the do not sign notice as the escalated equivalent of strike action, as it seems would pretty much anybody else in the film industry. It was what caused several major productions to be lost from Australia, coincidentally at the behest of the MEAA. If you were a NZ film producer, and you saw the same tactics introduced at the start of discussions in NZ as had caused the crippling of the Australian film industry, would you not be slightly concerned?

Whether or not The Hobbit would comply with the Pink Book is a red herring, Bill. As far as I know, nobody has ever suggested that the Hobbit would not, and did not, comply with the minimum standards set out in the Pink Book. As far as I know the terms and conditions for Hobbit contractors all exceeded what was in the Pink Book.

My take on it was that Helen Kelly got in far too deep. Had EA had their act together, and been legally able to negotiate directly with Jackson only on the terms and conditions for EA members working on the Hobbit, and expressed that desire throughout, then there wouldn’t have been any problems. But EA didn’t have its act together. MEAA jumped in and tried to use The Hobbit to set precedents throughout the industry where it had previously failed with smaller producers. The CTU funded the Bryson case to break contractor agreements and set a precedent. EA and the CTU never convinced Labour to change the Commerce Act to allow for collective bargaining of contractor agreements.

But when you’re dealing with international money that has choices about where it’s going to do its productions, you can’t play games. You can’t act as incompetently as EA and MEAA and Kelly did. You can’t make demands that aren’t allowed in law. And you can’t try to hold an international production to ransom. You might think those are legitimate union demands but any realist would say, and experience elsewhere shows, that the international investors will just go elsewhere.

“What would you know about dealing with international money? You don’t even understand contract law!”

I don’t know anything about dealing with international money, except that when the same tactics were tried in Australia the big international film market crashed. I appreciate the lecture on employment law but unlike Helen Kelly I’ve never jumped in on an issue and supposedly “fixed” it only to see it blow up in my face and see the Government change employment law to stop the collapse of a multi-billion dollar industry.

And history doesn’t treat the MEAA or Equity too kindly either. MEAA’s attempts to get into the NZ film industry has been set back years. Of all the hundreds of actors who worked on the production, how many flocked to join Equity after the dispute? A grand total of zero, that’s how many. Smart tactics from those geniuses. They gambled big on the Hobbit, hoping Warners would blink. Instead they lost everything.

Where to start? That aussie industry didn’t collapse; the issue blew up because Jackson lied; the law was changed because this is a right wing government who don’t like workers rights, and which is lead by an airhead autograph hunter; unions believe in principle, sometimes that costs. But the union marches on.

Paddy, Jackson was telling the truth when he said that the boycott threatened the production. Once the ban was lifted he said that he didn’t trust MEAA not to cause damage again, and that the issue was no longer about the boycott but the threat that they could disrupt things at any time they pleased. I haven’t seen anywhere that PJ said the ban was still in place when it wasn’t. I have seen PJ say that the SAG had been saying for weeks that the ban would be lifted the next day, but it remained in place for weeks.

When the other party you’re negotiating with slaps you with a ban before you sit down to talk to them, and then says it’s going to be lifted but it isn’t and deadlines pass day by day, then I think you’ve got every right to point out that the ban is still in place. And you’ve got every right to lose confidence that they won’t play games in the future.

MrSmith, NZ Actors Equity is now registered in Oz and reported zero income and expenditure in the last year. Equity calls itself an “autonomous affiliate” of MEAA but its website is run out of there, the 2011 accounts filed in NZ were the Australian accounts for MEAA which doesn’t mention NZ once. There is now a rival group NZ Actor’s Guild which is run out of NZ, and is five times the size that Equity ever was and promotes itself as not being part of MEAA and accepts contractors as members. As far as I know nobody listens to Equity anymore. For all intents they are pretty stuffed.

“NZ Actors Equity is now registered in Oz and reported zero income and expenditure in the last year. Equity calls itself an “autonomous affiliate” of MEAA but its website is run out of there, the 2011 accounts filed in NZ were the Australian accounts for MEAA which doesn’t mention NZ once.”

What’s your point? AE is part of MEAA, so they don’t have to file seperately. I appreciate that bullying international employers don’t want their workforces in different countries to organise together, but why is it a problem for you?

NZ Unions have to be registered in NZ. Actors Equity isn’t. All the time during the dispute Helen Kelly said it wasn’t an Australian union, but a NZ one. That’s now proven to be a sham.

I’ve read Bill’s scathing attacks on Russell Brown. He does a nice job of running Helen Kelly’s lines. And if you’re wanting to position it from Keyy’s perspective to make her look better then it really isn’t a bad argument. Except his inclination to smear Russell Brown and question his motives the whole time.

You take the cake Geoff. So we should take Bill’s word on the number of protesters when the video evidence proves the opposite? The unions should have embraced PJ and held him up as their icon rather than try to tear him down. If the Hobbit saga proved anything it’s that PJ can muster protest crowds far better than the unions can.

“As far as I know nobody listens to Equity anymore.”
(from you cmment at 10.48)

Well ER they might be Listening now, don’t you think?, and lets hope the rest of the emails and correspondence are hopefully released, because according to you they have nothing to hide or had anything to hide in the first place, apart from a few lies it seems.

The Media hopefully will be all over this and I suspect the unions will be the eventual winner, unless the spin doctors can rewrite history ER.

Can you produce ANY evidence that the CTU funded the Bryson case? Take care with your answer–i know what it should be. Perhaps you will check the meaning of “intervener” in an employment law case before you respond. But isn’t it fascinating that you should make this unsubstantiated claim in light of Jackson confirming in the just-released documents that Warner Bros funded the Three Foot Six Ltd side of these proceedings.

ER, your link has nothing to do with the Court of Appeal. It does talk about the Supreme Court hearing in which the CTU appeared as an intervener. So did Business NZ — are you suggesting that they were funding Bryson? Your link does not show that the CTU appeared in support of Bryson. Interveners are heard by consent on issues of major importance in the jurisdiction. Even more to the point it does not show any CTU FUNDING for Bryson.
So, do you have any evidence that the CTU funded Bryson?

Many of us disagreed with Russel Brown on that at the time. In the past, I’ve spent a lot of time looking at relevant evidence. Still don’t agree with Brown, and today Bomber was asking Brown if he was going to change his view.

The email make it clear the blacklist had been withdrawn and Jackson knew, yet he continued to argue that the union was putting the Hobbit filming in NZ at risk. That SAG notice does not change that and was tossed in as a distraction/red herring. And Jackson was the one acting in bad faith, as Irish posted previously.

In the wash-up, I am pretty sure we can count Russell Brown amongst the casualties of this as well. His reputation on the left took a fatal hit, and his once vital “Hardnews” blog is an feeble shadow of what it was before the Hobbit dispute, a blog whose name that now more often mocks it’s content than reflects it.

His strategists probably hope that fuss will be over when he returns,
and that it strengthens the conservative narrative – witness gosman’s
sudden active involvement on this blog and his line of argument.

No accident. He is planting seeds, testing themes, testing the opposition.

Textor will use them in focus groups, further refined
in targeted phone surveys, and used in Nationals monthly polls.

This is certain: days before the cessation of weeping that The Hobbit was at stake, Sir Lying Crud already knew that the blacklist had been lifted. But he continued to weep. Poor genius Peter. His life’s work at risk. And the jobs, the jobs, the jobs.

Bullshit !

The kaupapa went far beyond the instant. Sir Lying Crud wept his arse off advancing the true agenda of his paymasters Warners, viz. he wrought a change in New Zealand employment law. Key et al were complicit. And all those good folk were encouraged to publicly hate their colleagues for fear of their jobs. Wonder what the dupes are thinking right now ?

Sooner or later the redacted portions of those emails will come out. Without them we already have banana republic. We gotta know what’s in those redactions.

Nope. It’s the Tories who do all the masturbation, so your claim makes about as much sense as Paula Benefit saying she cuts benefits to help poor parents. Or that John Banks doesn’t have a cabbage boat. Or any of the other crap spewed by people who let their wallets speak for them.

“There is no connection between the blacklist (and it’s eventual retraction), and the choice of production base for the Hobbit.” – Peter Jackson, Monday 18 October 2010 at 7:08pm.

Cheers for that, PJ. Not quite what you said at the time, is it?

The dominant thread running through these emails seems to be pathological hatred and paranoid conspiracy theory ramblings directed at Simon Whipp.

How much different would this whole saga be if PJ & co just had a meeting and talked things over like adults instead of writing bitchy paranoid emails about a feud that existed only inside their imaginations?

Yeah no oscars. There is the minor consolation that it’s pulled in a billion dollars so far before it’s even gone to DVD and employed 3,000 people. And that there are two more installments to come. What a dodgy impact on New Zealand that guy has made!

3000 jobs. Income tax on those jobs. GST on everything spent by those people from their jobs. Hundreds of millions in economic activity. Security for the film production industry that they can make big films in NZ. Tens of millions in promotional activity for NZ. Given that the government’s investment was limited to the GST that they wouldn’t have collected if the films hadn’t been made here in the first place. I think that’s a pretty good investment.

The vast majority were unsecured contractors jobs with no job security, and certainly NZ workers and actors treated like second class citizens in their own country compared to the foreign workers and actors

Fact of the matter is we gave a fuckload of tax payers money and concessions to billionaires for no reason

if the films hadn’t been made here in the first place.

Yeah I don’t think Jackson wanted to spend the next 5 years shooting the film in Khazakstan or in Sydney

Yeah because when you go into production for a year to make a film you expect the actors to be employed for ever.

As opposed to, say, losing the production to NZ just because they weren’t permanent jobs.

How much job security do you think actors have in NZ if all the big international producers pull out? Do you know anything about the film industry in NZ? It’s these big productions that pay far better than local productions and create an industry for them to work in. But apparently you think it’s better to give our film industry away to an Australian union to ruin for us. Nice principle that is, mate.

We didn’t give away a fuckload of taxpayers money. Warners got their GST back. GST that the government wouldn’t have got if the production hadn’t happened here. “For no reason”. Except all the money the government got, and all the money New Zealanders earned, from having the films made here.

Yeah I get your point, Warners wanted to stump up hundreds of millions of dollars to get New Zealand actors belonging to an Australian union on the global screens, rather than you know, tell Tokein’s story.

I’m not an actor but I would much rather actors are making money doing the stuff they love doing, aka ACTING rather than sitting on the dole not doing what they love because we’ve chased all the big companies out of NZ because they’re foreign-owned.

Why don’t you start a political party called Ban the Hobbit? See if you get elected to Parliament and change the law so you can ban international money in films. Last I saw the Hobbit films were stupendously popular.

How did you go with your I HATE PETER JACKSON sign at the Hobbit premiere in Wellington? Get a good reception from the hundred thousand people who showed up to celebrate, did you?

I am waiting now, for those Chinese investors, wanting to buy farms and dairy production factories here, also wanting to build new ones, coming with the same argument and agenda. Like for instance that wages here are too high to compete with Chinese production, so the government has to lower the minimum wage.

Then a National led government may say, hmmh, maybe, maybe we need to look at this. For the benefit of NZ, for getting “investment” and for getting “jobs” created, the minimum wage may be reduced to $ 5 or less an hour. Also they may look at migration law reforms, falling for arguments by operators from China, claiming they need the “skilled staff” able to read in Mandarin, or Kantonese, to talk with their supervisors in that language, so migrant rules may change to allow in many more low paid migrant workers from China, living in dormitories and working 1 2to 16 hours a day.

This is what all this is about, it is about the “global playing ground” of ruthless capitalism, and it is happening everywhere, one country and economy being sold and played off against another. It stinks, is rotten, it only benefits the large multinational operators and their shareholders and owners. So you are trying to justify just that, without seeing the bigger picture.

Where does the race to the damned bottom end I ask, in pay and working conditions like in Bangla Desh?

Yes it is possible that all those things could happen in the future xtasy. Except they aren’t happening. There’s no sign of any of that. The minimum wage has never been cut in NZ. Immigrants to NZ are pretty low compared to where they were when the economy was growing at full tit. Those Chinese investors who bought into Crafar can’t take their farms back home with them. They have to run their farms based on NZ rules, or walk away from them. That is totally different from a film production that can happen anywhere.

“Yes it is possible that all those things could happen in the future xtasy. Except they aren’t happening. There’s no sign of any of that. The minimum wage has never been cut in NZ.”

Actually it has, the rate for everyone under 20 has been cut to $10.80 p/hr.

What there’s “no sign of happening” is films moving offshore because of any blacklist, as Sir Peter Jackson told NZ, and which has been proved to have been a deliberate lie by the release of these emails.

Of course you don’t. So you should probably shut the fuck up about putting the whole industry at risk and being reckless with people’s livelyhoods and and the rest of the bullshit you’ve been spinning seeing as it’s suddenly such a not-big-deal.

Wrong answer. What is our actual ROI? Nothing. Not a cent. The 3000 temp jobs would have been available anyway, because the production was never under threat. The millions of taxpayer dollars were wasted. John Key may be NZ’s worst ever negotiator.

I ran into an old friend who works/ed there a few months back and she was absolutely adamant that they were told within Weta that production was on its way to UK/Ireland to the point of mass visas being arranged & flights booked for them.
Like as in within weeks they were all expecting to be shifted en-masse.
Thus they were really fucking angry at the union.

In summary, and in short: NZ has a rotten, virtually “corrupt”, highly manipulative government, and this just shows it. They have their favoured business people, whether in film-making, gambling, oil drilling and farming, and whatever, and they will do all to shut up the ones exposing their legally questionable conduct, and they are changing the law all the time, to reduce transparency, honesty, accountability and standards.

NZ is run by a rotten lot that only gets away with what they do, because most people are struggling, busy working, to earn the money to pay the bills, and the also rotten mainstream media is too busy to go soft on the ones that pay their livelihood, being commercial advertisers with their lobbies, who are also favourable towards the National and ACT parties.

NZ is indeed something of a dictatorship, as all other stakeholders and dissenters and questioners are increasingly being disenfranchised, having rights and resources taken away, and simply are being walked over in the rudest way on a daily basis.

Welcome to Nat ACT NZ, the dictatorship that many do not even recognise as such. But that is the most successful form of dictatorship, that people do not view as such.

Something that really pisses me off about the whole thing is this continued reference to the ‘Bryson loophole’.
Its actually the absence of loophole which they are actually angry about.

It used to be that you could force regular workers into a Contracting relationship with its reduced protections while still treating them as regular employees.
That was the loophole.

Labour changed employment law to specifically close that loophole.
To me as a layman the law is pretty damn clear and no uncertainty would have been present had they simply hired the guy as a regular employee which was what they treated him as.

Fundamentally the whole ‘loophole’ issue came about because of some doubtless very well paid management yet again proving incompetent or too lazy to actually do the job of managing the HR department/processes properly.

Also the fact that the improved conditions being requested by the union would have cost such a tiny amount compared to probably even just the management hours spent talking to Government & media let alone the extreme cost of moving such a huge production at such a late stage and then having to operate under much stricter union conditions anywhere they might move to.

I can’t find any reference in this emotive thread to what has happened since the law was changed. How have NZ actors and techies been affected by the change? Can US film-makers fly in their crews and leave NZ workers on the sideline?

Since the infamous actors’ dispute over terms and conditions on The Hobbit, some Kiwi actors have had to endure on-set conditions that include sharing coloured prop contact lenses, their union says.

Phil Darkins, of Actors’ Equity, told a conference in Wellington yesterday he had also heard of actors being verbally abused, denied shelter, and not being offered blankets or warm drinks after long shoots in the water.

Those who spoke out would not get further work, he said.

“To go public is essentially falling on your sword and saying your career is over.”

The lie told by Key and Jackson to the people of New Zealand remains unanswered.’

In te paper this morning the sole rebuttal was Gerry Brownlee calling it “ridiculous”. Says it all really. No answer, just a bozo brownlee response.

Come on Jackson, stand up in front of the taxpayers and people of NZ, the ones who subsidised your career and then your biggest films (we don’t get no subsidy), and explain yourself.

Unless there are big pieces of the picture missing you are coming across as entirely unworthy of the knighthood. Key will join you in the realm for certain however so it kind of points to the standing of knighthoods in these islands – a fucking joke.

When people lie they give themselves away with body language. Jackson on Campbell Live I think it was at the time was a perfect example , lots of blinking , shifting in his seat and unable to look at his questioner. I said to my family then that “this bugger is lying through his teeth”. He was the most startling example of all the giveaway traits I had ever seen.

I wish the government would offer more deals like the one they offered to Warner Bros so as to get more major business coming to NZ, if the business is good for NZ and its workers.

If I had been the pivotal person in a giant, expensive project and also wanted to do it in NZ and then the workers in NZ who would benefit from the work and experience, and the wages they would get, threatened strike and problems if they didn’t get what they wanted I would have been shocked and disappointed. Then I would have stopped trusting their commitment and sense of values if they would put their own interests in jeopardy and also doubt their sense of responsibility and commitment to the enterprise.

Then for actors to be so stupid and naive to join with an Australian union which would be strongly chauvinistic about their own industry and jobs, and expect Oz to do a better job for NZ than ourselves, well it’s unbelievable. Such actors should take up scriptwriting, in the increasing long spells between acting jobs, and learn to think out the storylines so that they recognise the believable and doable from fantasy and wishful-thinking.

The Australian union used the NZ situation to be able to strut with their chests out in other parts of the world while not getting the retaliatory results – because NZ would get that. It was a cynical move to advance the Oz situation, and put NZ down. And if some in NZ continued links with the Oz union, the more likely that further problems would occur at crucial filming points and finally the possibility that the whole project would be lost or only the first part would have been made and limped through in NZ, and Peter Jackson would lose the mana he had achieved.

Details about the film the River Queen made down the Wanganui River by Vincent Ward is worth remembering. This had an uncommitted actor in it and she caused much difficulty on her own, without a hostile union manipulating other fickle actors as well. Vincent Ward, the director, was taken off the film for about one-third of the shooting.
This was about the star Samantha Morton.They fired the wrong person,” Irish star Stephen Rea told the Listener last year, speaking of an actress who was “just operating on ego”.
“Impossible,” someone else intimately involved in the production told me – again off the record. “Brilliant but absolutely bloody impossible.”

For a start, she accepted another role (opposite Johnny Depp in The Libertine) at the last minute, forcing an autumn shoot to be postponed until winter. The result: a larger crew was needed to deal with the treacherous conditions. Costs ballooned.

In autumn, perhaps Morton would not have contracted the flu that took her out of action and shut down the production for six weeks. (The only other one of the 130 on the shoot who got sick, Ward says meaningfully, was off for two days). And when she was there, she reportedly clashed openly with Ward, arrived on set late, refused to accept the sometimes spartan working conditions and acted like a star.

Peter Jackson would have been aware of the diverse problems that can occur in any film and be trying to prevent them.

CV
To make a billion dollars profit from a big film project, first it has to be done. It is done on a considered decision that it will be profitable if it results in what has been planned, and if that is what happens then the profits will come, if large then that’s icing on the cake. A lot of ifs and no-one on this blog has ever undertaken such a large-scale expensive project that relies for profit on the opinions and cash from millions of people looking at a story in moving pictures. It’s a big task and it’s easy for the non-involved to kick at something so much bigger than they have ever attempted.

Well, that deserves closer analysis… because it feeds into some myths and spin.

How much did the production cost? I don’t believe the numbers spun out at the time of $200 or 500 or whatever00 million. It is common practice in business to ramp up the numbers in such situations. Then of course there is the question of how much of that number comprised payments to Hollywood, or funding costs, or some other unknown sums which remained locked wherever they were made up. So lets pick some random number and be generous – I’m picking $200 million.

So how many jobs in NZ are of that similar level? Let’s see… First we have the Chch rebuild which swamps that ridiculously, but of course that is a combined number involving many individual businesses etc. However, within that $30,000 million there are a significant number of private individual jobs at $20 million to $50 million. So there we go right there already, quite a number that are 1/10th to 1/4 of the size of the Hobbit.

What else? Um. Farming. Irrigation scheme in canterbury (grrrr!) Central Plains Water has an estimated cost of around $500 million, so that is in fact heaps more, and put together by probably people than the Hobbit.

Trademe was a $700 million enterprise set up by one small person.

Take a look at the NZX, or even better, have a close look at the many many coops and unlisted private businesses in NZ.

I’m sure you get the gist. Ffs, even people in my circle have done things on a scale that is measureable (as a fraction) against the Hobbit.

So Mr Nose, it aint quite the big thing people make out. Such things get done all the time by ordinary New Zealanders. And they pay taxes. And where are their knighthoods?

The World of movies is full of dodgy deals like this and Sir Pete is donkey(hobbit) deep, a lot involving the casting couch I might add . Key and his cronies are well versed. It was the unsubtle use of a popular medium to bash unions…the gullible bought it

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Family First NZ says that the NZ lecture tour by Dr Rob Jonquiere, a leader of the Dutch euthanasia movement, will ignore the mounting evidence from his own country that there’s no safe way to kill people and that assisted… ...